


In the Silver

by Deannie, EssieJane2



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: 3K Round-up Challenge, M/M, Supermagnificent AU, and she asked so nicely, because I kind of planned the AU that way, invisible smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssieJane2/pseuds/EssieJane2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell, he was too damn old for this. Being coy, hiding in the bushes—that crap was for teenagers. He was fifty years past that, wasn’t he? He’d just walk right up and tell the damn cuss what he wanted and have done. Just as soon as Standish returned. Which could be any damn time now. (Part of the Supermagnificents universe)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Silver

**Author's Note:**

> EssieJane wanted to co-write an invisible smut fic just like this one. 
> 
> So we did that. :) We hope you like it!

It was nearly midnight before Chris started to worry.

“Hey Cowboy,” Vin greeted him, dropping into the chair across the table and looking around the room. The familiar smell of feathers and buffalo settled around him. “Where’s Ezra? Figured he’d be looking for a game.”

“Patrol,” Chris said, trying not to grit his teeth. “What with that trouble with Guy Royal a couple of weeks ago, I figured we should have someone out keeping an eye on things.” He drained his whiskey and sucked in a breath. “Besides, I think he was disappointed with the pickings that came off that stage today.”

Vin smiled. “Not rich enough for him, huh?” Chris could feel the hunter’s eyes assessing him. “Damn fool risk he took with Royal’s man. Was glad to see that bunch headed off to Yuma, I can tell you.”

Chris tried very hard not to think about what could have happened. “He was lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“Nah,” Vin disagreed. “He was quick—he couldn’t reach the gun so he made sure it didn’t hit nothing important.”

Chris snorted. Nothing important. It had only been a score across Ezra’s arm, and Nathan had bandaged it up neat as he pleased. Was nearly healed now...

“He’s late,” he said quietly, damning himself for the worry. “Was meant to be back long before now.”

“Probably just ran into somebody on the way back into town,” Vin told him reasonably. Everyone was being reasonable these days, except him, it seemed. “Damn gambler is a hell of a gadabout. Man can strike up a conversation just about anywhere.”

Chris made a fist. Yeah. He could. With that bright smile, full of cheek and fire, and those damn cool green eyes… He stood up, bristling with energy. The exact wrong kind of energy. “Reckon you’re right,” he agreed. “I’ll make a last round of the town and see you tomorrow.”

Vin nodded him out and Chris ignored the queer look he gave him. He didn’t need anyone else’s questions right now. Had enough of his own. The seven of them—The _Seven of Them_ to hear Josiah say it—had fallen in with each other nearly three months ago now. Judge Travis’s “month to clean up the town” had become a running stipend and Ezra had long since gained his freedom from that warrant in Laramie. The con artist could’ve left any time he pleased. Hell, Chris could’ve too.

He wasn’t sure why any of them stayed, truth be told, but one thing was becoming hard to deny. What he felt for Ezra Standish wasn’t what he felt for any of the others. For anyone at all, in fact.

If somebody had told him three months ago that he’d be pining for that annoying peacock, he’d’ve laughed in his face. And it wasn't like he was really pining anyway, but… “Damn it,” he whispered, stalking angrily around the back of the buildings that made up the main street of this tiny town.

Digger Dan’s sounded brash and violent and Chris used his enhanced hearing to listen in for anything amiss. Or for the honeyed tones of a Southern bastard who didn’t have the common decency to tell him he’d gotten back into town.

He didn’t hear either and moved on, growling in the darkness. Damn Standish anyway. The gambler was interested, that was pretty certain. Chris could smell him coming, hear him coming… Ezra’s little invisibility trick had probably let him spy on people before without anyone the wiser, but Chris knew when the son of a bitch was watching him—and it was more often than a disinterested party had any right to.

Hell, he was too damn old for this. Being coy, hiding in the bushes—that crap was for teenagers. He was fifty years past that, wasn’t he? He’d just walk right up and tell the damn cuss what he wanted and have done.

Just as soon as Standish returned. Which could be any damn time now.

 

The saloons closed a few hours later, and Chris had passed worried and gone straight on to pissed as hell.

“If that son of a bitch isn’t dead in a God damned ditch…” he cut off the thought. It would derail his anger. Still, he was just about ready to get a posse together when he caught a whiff of burnt silver on the air toward the west side of town. Jogging silently around to the livery, he listened carefully, hearing the distinctive half step of an injured horse.

“Come on, my friend,” Ezra murmured comfortingly. “You’re home now, and we’ll get that foot seen to.”

Damn that horse too while he was at it.

Chris slowed his run and caught his breath before he walked into the barn. A single lantern glowed inside one of the stalls near the back and shadows danced on the wall, accompanied by the sound of a hand running comfortingly along horse hair.

Chaucer whinnied in protest and Chris slipped up to the door of the stall to watch Ezra carefully lift the horse’s left foreleg and dig gently into the sole of his foot with a pick. “Yes, my friend, yes. I’ll make sure that you get a proper brush down, but let’s see what else we find here.”

“He throw a shoe?” Chris asked. He smiled meanly to himself when Ezra jumped in surprise. It wasn’t the man’s fault his horse came up lame, but damn it, Chris hated to be worried.

Being worried meant you cared.

Ezra took a minute to regain his composure and held up a small rock. “Stone in his hoof, sadly.” He tossed the rock aside and looked down at the injured foot. “The main rock was much bigger. I fear he’ll be stuck in town for some days while this bruise heals.”

Chris nodded and watched as Ezra quickly scraped a few more pebbles out of the bottom of the hoof and rubbed his horse’s leg comfortingly.

“Thought you’d run into trouble when you didn’t show up tonight.”

Ezra smirked. “Mr. Larabee, I’m far more likely to run into trouble here in town than out on the trail.”

Chris bristled at the flippant remark. “Not all of Guy Royal’s men—”

“Guy Royal’s men are buffoons,” Ezra stated quickly, like he was trying to avoid the subject. He stepped around Chris to walk toward the bale of alfalfa in the empty stall at the very back of the barn. “Hardly worth my worry.”

“They were damn sure worth Joe Martin’s worry—” Chris began, only to have Ezra turn on him.

“Joe Martin’s killer has been brought to justice, if you’ll recall,” he barked.

“And you damn near got killed doing it!” Chris growled.

“Not damn near enough, was it?” Ezra asked, an anger in his tone that Chris hadn’t been expecting. “I’m still here, and Cillian MacPhee is not.”

Chris’s mind flashed back to that day two weeks ago: MacPhee’s gun pointed at Britt Potter’s head, the sound the bullet made as it plowed through flesh that no one could see. The blood, though? Ezra’s blood didn’t stay invisible when it sprayed out of him. It splattered onto the window of the mercantile, clear as day. It was a fact Chris had never wanted to know.

“You took a damn fool chance,” he growled. “You had no right.”

“No right?” Ezra replied, a cold laugh in his tone. “I believe protecting the people of this town is what we are paid that pathetic wage for, isn’t it?”

“You could’ve been killed,” Chris repeated, his anger rising because God damn it, this careless gambler shouldn’t be making him feel like this!

“I didn’t know you cared,” Ezra bit out coldly. The bitterness was hard to deny and Chris wondered at it. “Why, exactly, is it your business anyway, Mr. Larabee?”

Chris didn’t even realize he’d been moving closer until he reached out and found Ezra’s shoulders in his hands. He slammed the younger man into the wall of the empty stall with more force than he should have and their lips were suddenly together. It was desperate and angry and _so damn good._

Ezra shoved him away after a moment that was far too long to mean he didn’t want it. “What the hell are you doing?”

Chris chuckled meanly. “Ain’t a question you need answered, is it?” he asked. “You been using that little trick of yours from the beginning, haven’t you? Watching me.” He leaned in, smelling burnt silver. That smell that could make him hard just thinking about it. The second kiss he took was long and breathless and just as hard as the first.

Ezra didn’t fight it, and under the silver, Chris could smell him getting turned on. Still he gasped when the younger man thrust forward, grinding into him and causing him to gasp.

“Were you planning on taking me right here, then, Mr. Larabee?” he asked. “Like an innocent farmhand?”

Chris grabbed his shoulders again and maneuvered them both so that they were up against the sturdier wall of the barn itself. “I actually just came in to bitch you out,” he breathed, reaching down and cupping Ezra’s dick through his pants to draw a groan from him. “And I damn sure hope there’s nothing innocent about you.”

Ezra growled into his mouth and had his hands suddenly on Chris’s pants, unbuttoning them in record time, thank God. “Oh, not for many years, my friend.”

Didn’t take long and they were grinding against each other like those teenagers Chris had been thinking on earlier in the night. Messy and sloppy and Chris was trying to be careful, but damn he’d wanted this for weeks. And then Ezra had to pull that damn fool stunt with MacPhee—

Ezra grunted—in pain this time—and Chris backed off a touch. He hadn’t had this kind of strength when he was a teenager, after all.

“Much as I am enjoying myself,” Ezra gasped as they separated. “We are rather exposed—” He chuckled, not bothering to look down at the states of their trousers. “—in more ways than one.”

Chris looked back at the stall Ezra had been headed into before their… altercation. It was well-padded with straw and out of the way. If they were quiet, no one’d stumble on them. He hoped. “It’s too late for anyone to be coming in now anyway,” he said.

He moved back into the space and Ezra moved with him, and then it was his turn to be pressed against the wall as Ezra slid up to him and kissed him thoroughly.

“Perhaps,” Ezra whispered. “But be that as it may, I believe some added protection is advisable.”

Chris felt a warmth start in his crotch, different from the usual, but pleasant and buzzing. When it spread to his stomach and down through his thighs, he looked at himself and saw… nothing.

“Jesus, Ezra,” he barked, “what the hell?”

His body was disappearing as he watched, and so was Ezra’s, and it was warm. He hadn’t expected warmth given how cold the damn stuff felt on the outside. When the heat of it grew to envelop his shoulders and then his neck, he began to panic, an instinct he couldn’t fight that warned him of disaster if the silver covered his mouth.

Ezra leaned in close and whispered, “Wouldn’t want to get caught, now would we, Mr. Larabee?” And then he was gone completely and his freezing lips were on Chris’s and the warmth rose up to cover his head and suddenly those lips were warm and he could see Ezra again. Sort of.

The gambler pulled back and was grinning at him, looking so damn hot, even in the weird brown and golden glow of… inside the silver, he guessed.

“Damn, Ezra…” he whispered, trying to catch his breath. The sensation wasn’t at all like he’d expected. Somehow he’d thought it would be a layer of ice separating him from the world. But the warm and the soft and the way the silver changed the colors around him made it all strange and exotic.

Ezra looked exotic, too. Golden and grinning and up to no good, he just stood in the silver and waited for Chris to collect himself.

Chris didn’t want to collect himself. Not by a damn sight. He pulled Ezra to him and kissed him fiercely, sliding his hands down the back of the man’s trousers, pushing them roughly off his buttocks and onto the floor. The warmth of the silver followed his movements, covering the skin he exposed as he went.

With all that grinding, he was plenty filthy enough to do the job, he reckoned, but he paused a long moment in uncertainty until the younger man opened his eyes, irritation and impatience in the strangely sepia depths.

“You will find,” Ezra murmured, gasping as Chris slid one invisible finger into his ass. “That being invisible makes any number of things easier.”

And it did seem to. His finger felt warm—as it would, of course—but with a layer of… cushion? Something. He took about five seconds to wonder what being fucked by something as cold as Ezra always was would be like. And then Ezra growled and grabbed his dick and ran a hand over it roughly, causing Chris to bite down on his lip to keep from coming right there.

“It is late, Mr. Larabee,” Ezra murmured, plundering his mouth and working his cock with a fierce need about him. “And I am very, very tired of waiting for you to make up your mind.”

Amid the passion and the need, anger flared. God damn it, why the hell hadn’t Standish made a move himself, if he was so damned interested!? Fueled by his irritation as much as by the hand that had him spilling pre-cum all over it, Chris reached down and forced Ezra to let go, then turned him over the nearest bale of alfalfa in one deft move.

Ezra groaned in pleasure this time and bared his ass and Chris couldn’t have waited if he tried. He slid in, less careful than he should have been, but the slick of his want and the cushion of the silver combined with Ezra’s own desire made it easier. Pushing in was different, hotter somehow and with a layer between them, but it was so damn good he had to pause and get himself together.

* * * * * * *

Just outside the stables, Buck dismounted from his horse, whistling softly. He was tired, but it was a good tired. His... _companion,_ had not only known what she was doing—hell she'd managed to teach him a trick or two that he hadn't known, and he hadn't thought that was even possible anymore—but she'd been extremely enthusiastic about things, too.

He smiled at the memories, as he brushed down his horse, feeling himself harden slightly—and suddenly realised it wasn't just the _memories_ that were causing his body's reaction. Somebody else in the near vicinity was indulging in the same activities that he had been, earlier in the night.

He finished the currying and closed the stall door, making sure the horse had enough feed and water, then turned, trying to locate the source of the emotions, realizing that it was stronger towards the back of the livery.

Frowning slightly as he realized not just _what_ he was feeling, but _who_. Chris. Who was... currently nowhere to be seen.

He could feel what was going on, Hell, he could _hear_ it, but he just couldn't _see_ any...  All of a sudden his jaw dropped as he realized just what _was_ happening in the back of the stables.

He'd known Ezra could turn _himself_ invisible, and he knew that he could make _small_ objects 'disappear' as well, but he hadn't realized the man was strong enough to 'disappear' another whole human being! Especially while they were...

He backed off hastily, hoping that the others hadn't seen him, and didn't know that he knew... He was happy for them, sure, (Not to mention more than a little turned on by what they were broadcasting) but he was no peeping tom, and if he hadn't happened to be visiting a lady outside of town and come back just a little later than he'd intended to... well, he wouldn't be here at all. He'd be none the wiser as to the fact that Chris Larabee had stopped 'dancing' with Ezra Standish, and started doing a whole other kind of activity with him instead.

* * * * * * *

Ezra shoved back against Chris, taking the rest of him in in a second and letting out a long, low sound of need that had Chris rocking in and out quicker than he’d meant to. The ride was fast and hard and before long Chris felt Ezra shove him back a step with his ass, giving himself enough room to take his own dick in hand and start pumping in time to the movement of both of them. Chris wrapped one hand around Erza’s chest to help hold him up, and let the rhythm take him.

His ears only heard the sound of them together, the slap and the grind of it, the whimpers that made him harder. He only smelled the musk of them, wrapped in burnt silver and heat.... After what seemed a lifetime and a second all in one, Ezra threw back his head, his hair golden brown inside the silver, and came with a grunt as the arm braced against the hay bale buckled. Chris tightened his own arm around him and kept him from falling and came as hard as he’d come in a damn long time.

“Fuck, Ezra,” he breathed after a long moment. He had them both standing now, and moved his hips back slightly so his dick slid out on its own, wringing a shudder from his partner.

Ezra chuckled. “I believe that’s the general idea, yes,” he murmured, sounding satisfied. Chris went to let him go, but the younger man grabbed at his arm. “I’m not sure I could stand on my own.” The whisper was both tentative and exhausted. “You can be rather… forceful.”

Chris closed his eyes. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he whispered. He grabbed one of the horse blankets piled on the bench within reach and threw it one-handed to cover the pile of straw in the corner, then manuevered them both over to it, using himself to cushion Ezra more fully. “Shouldn’t’ve let myself get so God damned carried away.”

“I think I rather like you carried away,” Ezra breathed. “It’s about time you tried it.” And then that damn chuckle again, laced with a pain that struck at Chris. He should have been more careful. His body had been reengineered for force—he knew better than to lose control when he was doing something like this. Of course, it’d been a hell of a long time since he’d done it, hadn’t it?

Ezra melted back against him and seemed to be falling asleep, and Chris was coming down from the sex enough to be more aware of the world around him. One of the horses in a nearby stall was snorting angrily, probably annoyed by all the human carrying-ons. The lantern on the wall in front of Chaucer’s stall was giving off a soft golden glow, and the night was a damn sight warmer now than it had been before the two of them finally did what had been coming for weeks. Months, maybe.

He looked down at Ezra’s face, soft and a little blurry in the silver… In the silver.

He shook the pleasantly heavy body on top of him. “Ezra?” The younger man slept on so he shook him harder. “Ezra, wake up!” he hissed. How the hell did this stuff come off?

Just when he was starting to think he’d be like this until dawn, Ezra opened one eye, clearly wide awake and waiting for him to figure it out, the bastard.

“Shake yourself like the dog you are, Mr. Larabee,” he murmured, smiling and closing his eye again. “It all comes off without washing, don’t worry.” He sniffed theatrically. “Though I believe you could do with a bath after all this activity.”

Chris glared at him and shook himself with care, the jarring still causing Ezra to shift uncomfortably. The cool of the night rushed in on him, though he didn’t really feel the silver “fall off” like he thought he would. The world just came back into focus. Except for Ezra.

“You staying like that?” he asked, a smile in his voice as he ran a hand over the half-naked body he couldn’t see. The cold on the outside of the silver was actually sort of welcome.

“You disrobed me rather decisively,” Ezra pointed out.

“I did,” Chris agreed. “You could get dressed, though.”

“That would take more energy than I currently wish to expend.” Ezra’s body above him twitched the tiniest bit and all the silver slid off of him, leaving him visible and thoroughly debauched.

“How come you don’t have to shake like a dog?” Chris asked teasingly, watching Ezra for signs that he might be more than just roughed up from the out-of-control sex.

Ezra stretched, hissing a little as the movement pulled on something, and sat up, his bare ass on Chris’s half covered thigh. “Years of training,” he murmured. The pain in the words wasn’t physical and it would have been easy to miss, but Chris found himself listening closely enough to hear it, and wondered what put it there.

Meanwhile, he was watching the show as Ezra rose stiffly and headed for the pile of clothes at the front of the stall. Chaucer whinnied in annoyance, two stalls over, and Ezra clucked at him.

“This is hardly my fault,” he told the horse. Chris stood and pulled up his trousers, buttoning himself away and smirking as Ezra watched intently, unwrapped by the silver he’d been hiding behind for too long. “You must take up your protest with Mr. Larabee.”

Chris put very gentle hands on Ezra’s now-clad hips and eased around him into the aisle. He headed for Chaucer’s stall, as the gelding watched him come, wary and irritated.

“Sorry, boy,” he murmured calmly, reaching out his hand—

“—I’m afraid I wouldn’t—”

“Damn!” Chris growled, Ezra’s warning incomplete and unnecessary as Chaucer reached his head forward with impressive speed. “He bit me!” His hand was bleeding. Honest to God teeth marks!

Ezra walked up, nearly limping after their session. “Chaucer objects to the smell of deception,” he said coyly.

“How the hell’d he stay with you so long?” Chris barked back, nursing his hand. A sudden look crossed Ezra’s face and was gone, and Chris cursed himself for his choice of words. But they couldn’t be taken back and Ezra reached forward to lay a soft hand on his horse’s muzzle.

“Chaucer and I reached an understanding long ago,” he said, his affection for the horse all too clear. “He is perhaps the most loyal animal I have ever known, and I count myself lucky that he indulges my foibles as he does.” He gave a mean grin. “But he does still object to my trick, so I try not to subject him to it often.”

The two men stood in the lamplight a long moment while Ezra stroked his horse’s head. Farther down the line, Lady shook her head and snorted, probably wanting some attention of her own. Chris wasn’t sure what to say. It had been so simple when telling Ezra how he felt was a thought in his brain, but the practice of the thing…

“Ezra…” he began tentatively.

“I am off to find my bed,” Ezra interrupted, walking stiffly toward the door as if nothing they’d just done had ever happened. And then he glanced over his shoulder with a quirk of his eyebrow. “Would you care to join me?”

The gambler was two steps out the door before Chris could move. He still caught the man before he reached his room.

* * * * * * *

Morning came earlier than Chris had thought it would. He and Ezra hadn’t done much more than make out like schoolboys once they got to Ezra’s room—the walls were too thin and Ezra’d had enough, in Chris’s estimation. That it wasn’t Ezra’s estimation didn’t factor into it when they were both tired enough to just curl around each other and sleep.

Chris slid silently away from Ezra’s morning erection, nestled in his ass crack as the younger man had him wrapped around from the back. His hand had healed overnight, thank God. He wouldn’t have wanted to explain why Ezra’s horse had taken a chunk out of him in the middle of the night.

“A bath, Mr. Larabee,” Ezra murmured, awake instantly with no trace of censure or hurt in his tone for Chris’s exit. He stretched, whining slightly. “I believe I’ll have one sent up for my own pleasure as well.”

Chris collected his clothes and threw them on, a little disappointed that he wouldn’t get to watch Ezra scrub last night’s activity away. Didn’t seem fair, considering that Ezra’d watched him bathe at least a few times that he could name.

“Ezra…” he began, not entirely sure what he wanted to say but knowing that he didn’t want last night to be a good fuck and nothing else.

“I believe I’d rather have this discussion when I am clean and recovered,” Ezra said quellingly, opening his eyes to meet Chris’s worried stare with candor. “As in agreement as I believe us to be here, I do not hold to morning after declarations.”

Chris snorted. “Sober up, you mean?”

“Exactly,” Ezra agreed, rolling over and pulling the sheet with him so that he bared that ass shamelessly. Chris stood and just admired him a minute, wincing at the bruises he knew he’d put there and wondering where the long scar that ran from the outside of Ezra’s hip down to his knee came from. Looked like a bayonet, maybe. Lord, those things hurt like hell…

“Chris?” Ezra barked, shaking him from his thoughts.

“Right,” he said, smiling wryly. “Bath.”

* * * * * * *

Not a whole lot later, Chris watched his oldest friend walk in the door of the saloon, and not quite stop in his tracks as he saw Chris, before detouring to the bar to order his breakfast, and join Chris at the table.

Even as he watched the other man, frowning at the reaction, Chris realized something that had been sitting in the back of his brain since the previous night - a brain too swamped by sex to really pay attention to the details. _Buck's horse had been in its stall when he'd chased Ezra outside, after they'd...!_

She hadn't been there previously. Buck had been visiting a lady friend somewhere outside of town, and he'd let Chris know that he would be back late—if he came back at all.

That meant that Buck had come in while he'd been... While _they'd_ been... _While you were screwing Ezra's brains out in the back of the stables._ A part of his mind supplied, helpfully. He felt the heat rising in his face as he realised that there was no way that Buck—being what he was—could have missed what was going on. _Oh, Hell!_

“Good night out, Buck?” he asked, trying for a blithe tone. He’d learned years ago how to screen his emotions from the empath and he fought to do it well now.

“Um, yeah,” Buck replied, sounding distracted and trying not to meet Chris’s eye. “Yeah. Miss Fanny is right welcoming.”

Chris sipped his coffee and pretended he wasn’t sweating. Funny thing was, it looked like Buck was, too. “That’s good,” he said quietly. “Glad you had fun.”

Buck nodded. “Yeah. So, uh. How did things go here?” he asked awkwardly. “Anything interesting happen?”

Chris looked out the window, stalling. The running boy from the bathhouse was trotting back toward the place with his wagon of water barrels. Looked empty, so Ezra was washing upstairs.

Hell. Probably shouldn’t have thought about that.

“Must’ve been pretty quiet, huh?” Buck said, clearly fishing. And nervous.

Chris mentally shook himself and looked at Buck, who was looking anywhere else. And absolutely _dying_ to ask him about last night. Unaccountably, his own nervousness fled and he found himself fighting a smile. Buck was _embarrassed._ Whether because he’d walked in on them or because of what they were doing, Chris didn’t know, but he was pretty sure he’d never seen Buck like this. Hell, he’d been expecting the man to drown him in questions about it or pat him on the back or _something_. But this…

This could be fun.

“Sure was,” Chris answered, sipping his coffee again, feeling more at ease. "Nothing to see, you know what I mean?"

Buck swallowed and nodded and silence fell.

What exactly was going on? Buck had been pushing on this in his own way almost since they’d come back into town after the fight at the Seminole village. He knew Chris’s tastes in men, and Ezra damn sure fit into them, now Chris was willing to be honest with himself. It had to be about walking in on them then. Or maybe the fact that they were invisible…

Buck was looking just too damned uncomfortable, and Chris couldn’t stand it.

“New family came into town yesterday, though,’ he said casually.

“Oh yeah?” Buck asked, way too interested as he grasped for anything that wasn’t Chris and Ezra having sex in a barn.

“Yeah. Looking to buy a ranch. Said they were headed out to look at Royal’s spread, since the territorial surveyors revoked his homesteading claim.”

“Well that’d be nice,” Buck replied, meaning it, of course, but relieved to be on boring ground.

They chatted of other inconsequentials for a while, and Buck relaxed more and more until it was easy to forget they’d ever been fighting not to talk about last night. But then Chris glanced up toward the stairs like he’d been doing every few minutes since he figured out what Ezra was doing up there, and saw the man in question, looking fresh as a daisy, if a little stiff, making his way down to the saloon, a sanguine smile on his face.

Buck’s back was to the stairs, and Chris kept the smile off his face as Ezra headed to the bar and poured himself a cup of coffee as if he owned the place.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Ezra called cheerily. Buck stiffened up and looked ready to bolt, staying put with an effort.

The smile the big man put on was pretty convincing if you didn’t know him as well as Chris did. "You're up early ain't you, Ez?” Buck asked, making a show of eating his breakfast. “For you, anyway.”

"Oh, I had a good night's sleep, last night." The gambler replied, smirking slightly in Chris’s direction. "Better than I've had in a long time, actually. Late night patrols seem to agree with me."

The innocent look on his face made both the other men choke. Buck on a mouthful of food, and Chris on a swig of his coffee. "Fuck!"

"Dear, dear. Does that mean you won't be assignin' me any more of them, Mr Larabee?" Ezra looked at the older man, green eyes wide.

"I'll be assigning you _something_ , in a minute, Ezra!" Larabee swiped at the spilled coffee on his shirt, with a napkin.

"That sounds like... fun."

Buck couldn't take it any more, and hastily pushed back his chair. Grabbing his cup and muttering some excuse about more coffee, as he bolted from the table. His face under the mustache as red as the gambler's jacket.

Ezra turned to the other man. "Was it something I said?"

His smile disappeared at Chris' next words. "He knows."

_"What??"_

"Buck knows, Ezra—and no, I didn't tell him. Lady was in her stall when we left the stable last night..."

"And she wasn't there when we came in." The gambler finished, thoughtfully.

"No. He must have come in halfway through." The blond took a swig of his coffee. Serious now. "He's an empath, too, remember. He can feel other people's emotions. Including... those ones."

"I see," Ezra said, sipping at his coffee with a touch of resignation. “It appears we’ll have to have that morning after discussion after all.”

“Nah,” Chris said easily. His face betrayed nothing as he watched Buck at the bar, talking to Harry as a way of delaying returning to them. “He won’t say anything. At least to anyone but me.”

Ezra watched Buck as well. “How are you so sure?”

Chris did grin this time. “Seems he’s embarrassed for walking in on us,” he said, finishing his own coffee. “Either that or the idea of having sex with someone he can’t see is too much for him.”

Ezra smiled so big his gold tooth showed. It was childish and sexy and endearing as all hell. “Well now that really _could_ be fun,” he said brightly.

Chris could’ve nipped it in the bud. He could’ve saved Buck the embarrassment of Ezra’s oblique references to that night over the next couple of weeks. He could have.

But he didn’t.

* * * * * * *  
the end

  



End file.
